The present invention relates to additive methods, systems, and materials for producing proppants.
Proppant production has depended on multiple batch operations. A ceramic template is spray coated in a fluidized bed and then sintered to form a high strength ceramic proppant body. The nature of the batch-based process means that the final yield of product is generally compromised to some degree by losses at each step—from milling of the coating slurry to spraying of the fluidized bed template; to sintering; and to classification.
Digital deposition of ceramic inks is currently utilized in the high-volume production of decorated ceramic tiles using solid particle inks on ceramic substrates, solid particle inks on glass for decorative and functional purposes, organic inks on glass for decorative and functional purposes, and conductive inks on silicon for the production of solar cells. Heretofore printing of ceramic proppants has neither been performed nor contemplated.